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An anonymous reader writes "Lost amid the announcements for Amazon's new tablets and e-readers was the news that their latest Kindle Fire tablets would include advertisements. So-called 'Special Offers' would place ads on the devices' lock screens in a similar fashion to the lowest price Kindle e-readers. However, on the e-readers, you had the option to 'buy out' the ads by simply paying the difference in price between the cheaper device and the regular version. But Amazon has no confirmed there is no way to opt out of the ads on the new Kindle Fire tablets."Update: 09/09 03:02 GMT by S: Reader Aoreias sends words that Amazon has now changed its mind. A spokesman announced that users will have the ability to opt-out for a fee of $15.

I wonder why ads bother people so much. Especially on the kindle where the ads are unobtrusive (you only see them on the power-off screensaver). My kindle came with ads disabled, and I got bored with the default images of authors, so I turned the ads on to get $50 refunded to my account.

I don't have any problems with adds on an advertising payed for device, but in this case, you are being forced to take the adds on something that you payed for in entirety.
I think I'll just stick with my nooks.

"you are being forced to take the adds on something that you payed for in entirety."

Do you work for Amazon, so you have some special insight into their pricing decisions? Because, common sense would say that if they didn't have ads, it would cost more, as with the Kindles which offer that option.

No, common sense says that a device with these specs would cost more without the ads.

You're not an economist, are you? The price isn't set by the cost of production/distribution etc, it's set at the point expected to maximise revenue, and it's well established that increasing the price of a product can in some circumstances increase sales. Yes, no doubt Amazon expects its profits to be higher with the ads, but that probably has almost nothing at all to do with the price to the consumer.

You aren't one either, are you? Why on earth would you conclude that Kindles are a Giffen good [wikipedia.org]?

The tablet market is very competitive, and Amazon prices their products aggressively--the $200 Fire had anywhere from $150-$201 worth of parts. Absent some extraordinary evidence to the contrary, it's quite reasonable to assume that the purchase price of a Kindle would trend towards its marginal cost, minus whatever per-device ad and sales revenue Amazon expects.

I wonder why ads bother people so much. Especially on the kindle where the ads are unobtrusive (you only see them on the power-off screensaver). My kindle came with ads disabled, and I got bored with the default images of authors, so I turned the ads on to get $50 refunded to my account.

It's on the lock screen, which means that like the eInk model, your battery life will be crippled because these ads will be displayed and cycled when in theory your device should be idle (in the case of the eInk versions) or have the screen off (in the case of the LCD versions).

I think we can all understand where Amazon is coming from here -- although given that we pay good money for the device kinda harms their case somewhat. However, I would really have preferred they find a different way to do this.

I don't see where they're coming from at all. They make money when they sell the device although admittedly not much. They make money when they sell the ebooks to you for damn near what it costs to get a hardcover delivered to your house. Greedy Bastards need to quit.

You push the power button on the Kindle Fire and the screen turns off. You push it again and the screen comes on and you're looking at the lock screen with adds - swipe the screen and the lock screen and ads go away. They are not displayed on the screen when the device is off.
On the e-ink displays the ads are displayed when the Kindle is turned off, but it requires no power to maintain the screen in that state - every once in a while the device wakes up, updates the ad and goes back to sleep - it uses v

You push the power button on the Kindle Fire and the screen turns off. You push it again and the screen comes on and you're looking at the lock screen with adds - swipe the screen and the lock screen and ads go away. They are not displayed on the screen when the device is off.

On the e-ink displays the ads are displayed when the Kindle is turned off, but it requires no power to maintain the screen in that state - every once in a while the device wakes up, updates the ad and goes back to sleep - it uses very tiny amounts of power and has almost on impact on expected battery life.

You push the power button on the Kindle Fire and the screen turns off. You push it again and the screen comes on and you're looking at the lock screen with adds - swipe the screen and the lock screen and ads go away. They are not displayed on the screen when the device is off.

On the e-ink displays the ads are displayed when the Kindle is turned off, but it requires no power to maintain the screen in that state - every once in a while the device wakes up, updates the ad and goes back to sleep - it uses very tiny amounts of power and has almost on impact on expected battery life.

The Fire thing sounds perfectly fine then. That's almost an ideal way to set it up, in fact, I'm surprised there isn't a "Special Offers" iPhone or iPod with the same setup.

The eInk thing, well, I own a Gen 2 Kindle, and my friend owns a newer one with Special Offers, and I know for a fact that his battery lasts nowhere near as long as mine, all other things considered.

No they don't have an off switch. The switch at the bottom locks the display and then it shows a static picture. Estimated battery life in this state is approximately 8months.

E-ink displays use power only to update the display, and that power is rather consistent. That's why you see battery life quoted in page turns. I'm not sure how fast the adverts cycle but I doubt you'll get 8months out of a device which has to display a new ad periodically unless the ad is static for the entire day or per activation of lock. Then there's the 3G usage in fetching those ads too.

Ads lower the signal-to-noise ratio by saturating the environment with irrelevant misinformation. Even if every ad was 100% honest and trustworthy, they would still distract you from more relevant inputs. But of course they are typically extremely dishonest and manipulative.

Furthermore, ads perpetuate the idea that life's purpose is to work your ass of so you can consume an endless stream of useless (and sometimes actively harmful) crap. They do their part in making people waste their lives chasing after a winning lottery ticket for the benefit of the 1% at the top who run the lottery. They feed various neurosis and addictions to manipulate people into spending their hard-earned cash to try and fix imaginary problems by illogical means of buying an unrelated product.

An ad campaign is basically information warfare. People disliking them is simply their self-protection instincts at work.

Tell me friend, are the ads targeted to you, like the ones in the Amazon emails? if so then I'd have NO problem with them, those ads have saved me probably a good grand in the past 2 years on things I was looking to buy anyway!

If ads are done right they can be really nice, its when the give you ads for crap you'd never buy in a million years that they suck. For example I recently bought a 32gb flash from Amazon for $16 with free shipping. I had been looking at flash drives so i got an email saying "Select f

I wonder why ads bother people so much. Especially on the kindle where the ads are unobtrusive (you only see them on the power-off screensaver).

Has some of my bandwidth gone to downloading those ads? Has some of my electricity gone to displaying them? Did I lose a tenth of a second of my life hesitating on unlocking it because I thought I saw boobies in the ad?

In all seriousness, I first started blocking ads because of bandwidth, back in the days of dialup. Oddly enough, the ads have kept pace with technology, and you'll still see a noticeable speedup (whether actually my network, or just because they can't be assed to pay for decent hosting so the load takes about 10x longer than the rest of the page combined).

At some point, I came to consider the ads as no different than your run-of-the-mill spammer - They go out of their way to waste my time, get me to look at their crap, try to con me into spending money, all on something in which I have no interest to start with. They fight back against ad-blocking technology with ever more subtle ways of getting around our filters, and yet they still can't take the goddamned hint.

So, you want to know why I loathe ads so much? Because marketers don't know how to take a polite "no" for an answer.

At some point, I came to consider the ads as no different than your run-of-the-mill spammer - They go out of their way to waste my time, get me to look at their crap, try to con me into spending money, all on something in which I have no interest to start with. They fight back against ad-blocking technology with ever more subtle ways of getting around our filters, and yet they still can't take the goddamned hint.

What hint would that be, that you want the site to be run by magic pixies that don't have any server costs, don't have any bandwidth costs and don't have any costs creating the content? Most people hate pay-walls and subscriptions with a vengeance so you don't want to give them your money, you don't want to give them eyeball time, you should get the part that benefits you but they shouldn't get the part that benefits them. Nobody wants ads as such, if customers do it's so they can get more content or pay less. It used to be that if you don't like what they're offering, don't buy it. If you don't like all the ads on TV, don't watch it. If you don't like all the ads on a website, don't go there.

Ad blockers are part of a bigger cultural change which is "if you don't like the deal, rewrite it". Don't like all the ads on TV? Get a PVR to skip them. Don't like the web ads? Get an ad blocker to browse the site without them. Don't like the DRM on BluRays? Download it off TPB. It's like a boycott, except the hard part of forgoing something you actually wanted. And there's a lot of people out there that just aren't reasonable in what they want, but nobody's going to sell them a Ferrari for $100. In the digital world there's no limits though, if you don't feel paying a buck for Angry Birds is reasonable and want to pirate it for nothing then you can. And the more unreasonable you are, the more you can justify.

What hint would that be, that you want the site to be run by magic pixies that don't have any server costs, don't have any bandwidth costs and don't have any costs creating the content?

Nice strawman, but I have my own website. And not a crappy LiveJournal blog, but a real, live, actual website. Costs me a whopping $10 a year.

Does YouTube differ somewhat from my own website? Sure it does! Do I, however, give the least fuck about whether or not Google makes a profit on a collection of content provided for free by its community

Nope.

See the disconnect here? People will provide content. The internet existed before its "monetization". Advertisers want to cash in on us, but honestly, we have very little use for them.

Nice strawman, but I have my own website. And not a crappy LiveJournal blog, but a real, live, actual website. Costs me a whopping $10 a year.

Yeah, I know quite a few people too who run their own website. Some even have their own actual business website. You know why it costs you $10 a year? Because no one visits it. A popular website can easily run a grand in monthly hosting costs. At that point, you either make sure your business can support the site as a marketing expense, or you make money off of each person visiting the site.

People will provide content. But they will provide it only for as long as doing so doesn't bankrupt them.

Do you ever leave your mothers basement? Do you buy your own food? Do you buy clothes? Do you walk down the street all? Do you drive? I could go on and on... Unless you are independently wealthy and never leave your house, *everywhere* you turn, there is an ad in your face.

I agree many times its subtle like the logo on a car or a small 'on sale' sticker on the grocery shelf, but its still there and always chewing away at your subconscious

Not all people do. I wore 'name brand' for a while, and i removed the logo as i refuse to be a walking billboard.

My dad used to demand the dealer take his logo off the car when he would buy a new car. Same reason. ( and when we had a body shop and could repair the damage, sometimes even the manufactures logo came off.

Some ads are so slick that even the most rabid frothing anti-ad person will let them slide by. Car dealers is one - On the back of a ton of cars is "Joe's Ford" etc. The other one is mobile phone ads "Sent from my ___".

( and theirs, even some of your clothing is most likely a walking ad.. )

You remind me of one crazy anachronistic hippie I once ran into in Atlanta. He confronts me over the T-shirt I was wearing, which had a company logo emblazoned upon it. He starts yelling about how they should pay ME to wear the shirt. Well, as it happens, they had; the shirt was provided by a company which sponsored the in-line skating team I was on, and I told him so. He didn't quite know how to answer that, so I left while he was

It's almost a tragedy of the commons—companies are so hell-bent on forcing advertising on consumers that an increasingly large portion of the population will go to extreme lengths to make sure that no advertising of any sort has any effect on them. If only we could take the colossal intelligence that went into developing Google's advertising infrastructure and actually grant some of it to marketers...

Google doesn't want you to opt out of ads on the Nexus, because a lot of their income comes from ads.

That would make more sense if Google actually had unblockable ads anywhere in their devices. I have both a Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7, and neither has ads anywhere outside of individual apps.

And honestly, you don't sound as if you really know what you're talking about, since it's trivial to root Nexus devices and subsequently install ad-blockers across all applications. The same can't be said for all of Amazon's devices.

Over the course of the last few days, Amazon has raised the price of the Nexus 7 in their store by up to $50 (it's only marked up $40 today) and stopped offering Prime shipping on it. Last week, I could pick one up for $199.99 and get free 2-day shipping on it. They now clearly want me to buy a Kindle Fire HD. Assholes.

I guess I'm going to my local Walmart and picking up a Nexus 7 now. Walmart, of all places!

Looks like Amazon itself isn't carrying it anymore. If you click on the products pages, you see that they're being sold by Marketplace sellers, such as "STL Pro" and "greentree9". The latter, at least, is fulfilled by Amazon, and thus has Prime available. It's still $56 over MSRP, though.

All I want a tablet to do is read books on, which means e-ink. The winner in terms of form factor is the Nook touch, hands down. Its pretty hard to improve on perfection, although it could do with a little more contrast.

I totally agree, the Kindle Paperwhite looks hands-down to be the best e-Ink reading solution at the moment. As long as you are OK using Kindle to buy books, it looks like a great device and not too expensive either (even without ads).

eInk is a reflective screen technology that operates tiny physical black and white particles to produce image. Both Nook GlowLight and Kindle Paperwhite do just that, so yes, they are true eInk devices.

And the way those things are lit is actually superior to an external light source, because it's much better at providing even lighting. The only thing better than that is reading in scattered light outdoors.

No, it's exactly lighted e-ink. It is not self-luminescent e-ink, but if it were that would defeat the purpose of e-ink being a reflective surface and easy-to-read. The light is even better than an external light because it has been engineered to provide even lighting, which is almost impossible to get with external lighting solutions.

Agreed. B&N has more attractive and better-made hardware, but the reading experience is lesser than Amazon's. The Paperwhite may dethrone B&N, though, as it has a significantly higher resolution (212 ppi vs 167 ppi).

Eink is fine for books that you are reading for enjoyment. For reference works where you might need to flip pages quickly, perhaps searching visually for a diagram that you know is on one of the pages near the middle, for example, but not recalling exactly which one, and where you could probably find the necessary page in about 5 seconds with a physical book, eink screen update times are simply *TOO SLOW* to replace either having a physical book in its stead, or else an electronic device that has video-cap

I think this will help Google Nexus sales. I am not aware they come with built in adware.

From a 30000 ft view, Android is just an ad delivery mechanism. If you zoom in, it's a mobile OS, but it's sole job is to enable delivery of Google's ad service to users from it's customers. And as always, you are Google's product, not their customer.

Now, I use google mail, google docs, google talk and chrome... but I know they're doing this to sell me.

I can't help wonder if the reason is that no one buys the regular model anymore. My wife has a special offers Kindle Keyboard (e-paper reader) with special offers and it seems to be done tastefully, and unobtrusively, even less distracting than the banner ad at the top of the page here. I can see why most people would chose the cheaper price if the downside is unobtrusive ad on the screen saver, etc.

When I first got the Kindle Touch, I intended on eventually opting out of the ads. As you say, though, they're surprisingly unobtrusive, and I even wound up taking advantage of some of the offers. I can understand other people not sharing my opinion, though.

The real irony is that an "advertisement company" has enough sense to limit their ads to websites that I have the freedom to avoid if I choose, while Amazon thinks I should be obligated to tolerate ads wedged into the OS where they become unavoidable.

None of the target audience for this device will care (or notice). Sure, there are plenty of geeks that will buy the device and root it and get rid of the ads, but nearly all of the people who buy an Amazon branded tablet are fine with Amazon ads and being locked to the Amazon ecosystem. Most people just want a device that works, they don't care how "open" it is, whether it's FOSS compliant, or whether or not it shows them an ad.

I agree few will care ( or understand ) about being 'open', but you are mistaken about those that don't want an advertisement in their face every-time they turn the thing on. Many are also not thrilled about being locked into one of the 2 main ecosystems. "why cant i buy a book from B&N on my kindle"? ( yes i know you can with some effort but the average guy wants it to 'just work'.. )

I picked up a low-end kindle at a discounted price (~$40) that I'm sure represented a loss for Amazon, and I don't buy any DRM'd books for it, so they're not recouping that loss from me. This gives me a gratifying feeling that I've successfully fought back against "the Man." I can read Jane Austen novels while traveling and not run out of reading material.

But the ads really are creepy and a nuisance. Every time you stop reading for a while, an ad comes up. To get past the ad, you have to click a button. Then it talks to your wifi network and pops up the details of the ad. Then you can finally click again to get back to reading Pride and Prejudice.

I accepted the ads as a conscious part of my plot to screw Amazon financially and get a useful toy for myself, which I use only while traveling. But would I pay hundreds of dollars for a device that pulled this kind of crap, if I was going to use the device a lot? No. Way. In. Hell.

Every time you stop reading for a while, an ad comes up. To get past the ad, you have to click a button. Then it talks to your wifi network and pops up the details of the ad. Then you can finally click again to get back to reading Pride and Prejudice.

That's totally unacceptable. It may well bomb, like binding ad cards into paperback books did in the 1970s and the 2000s.

Where does Amazon get off doing this? They're not the publisher. The device is paid for. The books are paid for.

Where does Amazon get off doing this? They're not the publisher. The device is paid for. The books are paid for.

The device and the books are being sold at a loss; or to put this another way, you're not the one paying for them. Amazon has discovered that consumers don't care what the catches are - in this case ads and the formation of an Amazon monopoly respectively - so long as things are cheap. In fact it will probably be the most successful Kindle yet.

Except it's bullshit. I've had an ad-ridden Kindle Touch, and the only two places where it shows ads is the lock screen and the book selection screen. It never shows ads when you actually read the book. If you leave it around for long enough that the device goes to sleep, then you see a lock screen with an ad. But it goes away as soon as you unlock (which you do with a physical button), and returns you straight to the book.

But the ads really are creepy and a nuisance. Every time you stop reading for a while, an ad comes up. To get past the ad, you have to click a button. Then it talks to your wifi network and pops up the details of the ad. Then you can finally click again to get back to reading Pride and Prejudice.

I have a Kindle Touch, and have never experienced this. When you put it to sleep, it shows an ad, yes, but I've never had to click through it or read the ad. All I have to do is wake it and go back to reading. Maybe there's been a new (and obnoxious) update that changes this behavior--or maybe it's an issue with the cheapest Kindle (which I did briefly own, but don't remember having this problem).

I picked up a low-end kindle at a discounted price (~$40) that I'm sure represented a loss for Amazon, and I don't buy any DRM'd books for it, so they're not recouping that loss from me. This gives me a gratifying feeling that I've successfully fought back against "the Man."

You lost as soon as you bought the Kindle. You helped them recover some of the cost of manufacture instead of letting them lose it all on an unsold device.

The only way to fight "the Man" is to not buy the man's garbage and get other people to do the same.

Eh??? BS much?I have both the low-end Kindle and the Kindle Keyboard (for me and my wife), both with "Special Offers" and have been extremely happy with them (which is why I bought the second) and would never even consider paying more for skipping the ads.How it works is, if you stop reading and leave your Kindle for a while, it will go to "sleep" mode. Instead of showing a blank screen, it will show an ad. I am noting here that since an e-ink display will only use power to change a page, this ad will do nothing to your battery usage. Anyway, the next time you pick up the Kindle you will see the add instead of a blank screen etc. You just have to press the power button and in a second you are back to where you were last reading.Now, if you like the ad (sometimes it can be something good, like a discounted book, or a $-off coupon etc - another reason to get the special-offers section), you can get more info on it by holding the center button, and at that point you will need a wifi/3g connection.Also, if you don't connect to the internet for a while, you will actually stop seeing ads and you will get instead a "connect to the internet if you want to get new ads" screen instead.There is also a banner in the home screen - I don't spend any time in that screen (too busy reading books), and it is a rather small banner.So, overall the special offers version is great. Cheaper to buy the device, also has saved me some $ when books I wanted came up as a special offer in an ad and it does not cripple the device in any way.The parent poster is either a troll, or mildly retarded and actually follows the on-screen instructions on how to read more about the ad instead of just skipping it.

Go through the replies for your post, and notice how there are already quite a few who don't share your experience, and not a single post that supports it. Nor has this behavior been described anywhere else so far, including numerous reviews of those Kindles by the customers.

Besides, your previous explanation of how it actually works on your device was somewhat nonsensical:

"Every time you stop reading for a while, an ad comes up. To get past the ad, you have to click a button."

Dead on arrival, I'm sorry, but no amount of technical wizardy, integration, cloud storage or other such thing can get past thing single issue. This is a deal breaker that simply can't be overcome. Sorry Amazon, I like you for so many other things.

No, but they can plaster ads in them before you buy them. Ever read a magazine?

I can imagine it now. A horde of basement-dwelling Slashdotters find their way out into the real world. Blinded by the sunlight, they stumble upon a newsstand, selling magazines and newspapers. Then they find out that the magazines contain ads - the very magazines that they paid for! Moral panic ensues. That is, until the confused newsstand owner collects another $15 from each of the Slashdotters. Then everyone is happy again.

Let's hope that when they find their way back to their basements, they don't switc

No but I have a few with the thick cardboard cigarette and other ads still in them. Surprisingly that increases their value now. There are also the pulp novellas that have the trashy ads in the back. I'm not sure if it was cost or advertisers felt it was worthless which stopped those.

I was wondering how Amazon could offer a data plan with the same price for a year's worth of service, that other tablet users have to pay in a month.

Well now we know. That data plan is subsidized with these ads...

I wonder if this will affect battery life at all. Ads on eInk I could see making a lot of sense because at rest they can just switch to an ad and there's no drop in battery life. But if you are going to have ads on a lockscreen, does that also mean a minimum time the lockscreen must be displayed on sleep? Will it just randomly turn on? Will it play audio too?

Has anyone analyzed the protocol that they use for advertising? How hard would it be to use a bogus DNS and serve your own ads, or to simply block them? Could a business with free public wi-fi set it up to serve ads for their business? Can I serve up ads for rooting your Kindle on my home network for any friends that visit?

I have no intention of buying a device that won't let me remove the ads, but for those who do, I think there might be a brisk business for a router that can block ad servers, along with a nice user-friendly UI to control it.

That's a shit sandwich on two levels. First, they don't even give you the option of going ad free. Second, the 4g LTE HD kindle fire has that sweet deal, but it's only 250 megs a month! Every kb counts.:/

I paid for the version without ads. In the kindle hacking community, there was a definite aversion to helping people circumvent the ads. If you don't want the ads, but a kindle without ads they'd say. Now however, I'm willing to bet that very same hacking community will consider it their duty to help people remove the ads. Amazons screwing themselves with this move.

Advertisers agree to honor DNT only from browsers that display the setting behind a door labelled "beware leopard".

It's bullshit anyway - any standard based on advertisers behaving ethically is a nonstarter. Apple's default no-third-party cookies seems worthwhile, if circumventable. Why not do more of that? If there are Moz people working on the DNT standard, I feel like they are being suckered.

For you youngins that weren't around at the time, in the late 90s at the tail-end of the dot-com boom, companies would offer PCs for free [tweney.com] in exchange for the ability to track your usage of the PC, track your buying habits, and to run ads. This happened to come late enough in the dot-com boom that "free" PCs were only around for a short period of time before the PC suppliers (and really, the crazy dot-coms that funded them) vanished in a puff of red smoke.

Anyhow, even though no one is getting a free device this time around the similarities are very strong. Amazon gets to track your usage and buying habits (via Silk), and they get to run ads. In fact the only thing that seems different is that instead of being exploited for free, people are expected to pay to be exploited this time around. Financially this is an improvement - this stupid concept may get off the ground for once - but I'm not sure this is any better for consumers than it was the first time around.

Perhaps, but it may also be that the special offers kindles out sell the ad free ones 10 or 20 to 1. Eeveryone I have talked to about their Kindles (various relatives, friends, etc.) have opted for the Special Offers model since they were introduced. Since Amazon does not release detailed sales numbers it is hard to tell for sure though.